The Influence of Auditor Independence, The Quality of Village Human Resources on The Audit Quality of Village Funds with the Role of Community as a Moderation Variable

The effectiveness of using village funds, which still has not had an overall impact on improving the welfare of village communities and the rise of cases of misuse of village funds, has made researchers focus on the audit quality of village funds. This research analyzed internal and external factors influencing the quality of village fund audits using a quantitative approach. The auditor independence variable is the internal factor of the auditor, and the external factor is the quality of human resources (HR) of village officials and the role of the community as a moderating variable. The research population is internal auditors in the district governments of North Sumatra Province. The data were obtained from the questionnaire results through the Google form and processed using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique with the Partial Least Square (PLS) method using SmartPLS software. The results of this study indicate that the Independence of the auditor directly and indirectly through the moderation of the community's role has a positive and significant effect on the audit quality of village funds. The community's role also strengthens the auditor's Independence in improving the audit quality of village funds. Auditor independence is an attitude that is owned and applied in carrying out village fund audit tasks. Auditors face various conditions and situations of different auditees, organizational support, leadership firmness, and work pressure so that consistency in their attitude of Independence through the quality output of village fund audits will determine the success of managing village funds appropriately on target. The quality of village apparatus human resources directly has a negative effect on the quality of village fund audits. Furthermore, the results of moderating the role of the community with the quality of village apparatus human resources have a positive and insignificant effect on the quality of village fund audits. The role of the community is urgently needed to strengthen the human resources of village officials in managing village funds to improve audit quality.Keywords: Auditor Independence, Quality of Human Resources for Village Officials, Community Role, and Quality of Village Fund Audit